NAPANEE—Rain has halted play at the Softball Canada junior men’s fastball championship tournament.

The skies opened around 6 p.m. and play was suspended in the two games in progress, with Newfoundland and the Saskatoon Diamondbacks just two outs away from completing their game. In the other match, the mercy rule—the game is over if a team leads by eight runs after five innings—loomed as Quebec held a 7-0 lead over the Napanee Abundant Insulation Express in the top of the third.

Earlier, that Napanee team was beaten 13-2 by the Diamondbacks, who broke open a 4-2 ball game with five runs in the top of the fourth. The other Napanee team in the nine-team tournament, Shoeless Joe’s, invoked the mercy rule in an 8-0 win over the Saskatoon Bullets.

In that game, Cody Brooks, Taylor Brown and Barry Hogeboom each belted a two-run home run and Eric Morgan scattered three singles and struck out seven to collect the pitching win.

Six games into the round-robin preliminary round, there are no teams at 2-0. Quebec, Napanee Shoeless Joe’s, Saskatchewan Diamondbacks and New Hamburg, the Ontario champion, are all 1-0; the defending champions from Irma, Alta., and the No. 2 Ontario team, the Tavistock Athletics, are both 1-1.

The opening ceremony was cancelled but organizers retained hope that the day's final game, between Shoeless Joe's and New Hamburg in a rematch of the Ontario elimination tournament final, could still be played tonight.

Organizers say the diamonds at the Fairgrounds complex can drain within an hour of the rain stopping. They will wait until 8 p.m. to make a decision whether to cancel play for the day and resume Tuesday morning where it left off.